Chapter 10: Encountering Philosophy
Travis Joseph Rodgers
Nations have departments of justice, activists push for social justice, and many have had encounters with the criminal justice system. These things are united by justice. What is justice? In this chapter, we’ll explore a general account of what justice is and then one major subdivision of justice: distributive. I’ll tackle criminal justice in a future chapter (Punishment). So, let’s talk about distributing the good stuff and determining “one’s fair share.”
Plato on Justice
One of the earliest systematic treatments of justice in the Western Canon is Plato’s Republic. Plato’s view is worth discussing for three key reasons. First, it shows how some idiosyncrasies of a society can affect even abstract conversations on justice. Second, it’s systematic in a way that provides plenty of food for thought. And third it offers both a concrete definition of justice and two concepts of justice.
One notion of justice (dikη) seems to encompass all of morality. Call this general justice. The other is more specific, focusing on what humans owe other humans. We’ll call this specific justice. General justice seems to consist of what we owe others like us (specific justice), what we owe ourselves (self-control) and what we owe the gods (piety). The specific sense of justice is the one closest to what we now think of as justice.
In Plato’s Republic, justice is basically the condition of each thing doing its own proper work. In the individual, that means our desires (epithumia) seek out food, drink, and sex. Our reason (logos) tells us when to satisfy our desires. And our passion (thumos) or competitive spirit aligns with reason to motivate us when we face contrary desires. Plato suggests that this setup is akin to the ideal social structuring. Producers should work to produce, soldiers should work to protect, and philosophers should rule. This is the origin of the Platonic “Philosopher-King.”
Distributive Justice: The Good Stuff
Aristotle’s treatment of the virtues in his Nicomachean Ethics is systematic in way that Plato wasn’t always. Aristotle identifies an area of human activity, identifies a virtue by name, and then tries to figure out the relevant virtue. Justice, it seems, relates things to people. Martha Nussbaum, in an excellent article on Aristotle’s picture, ties justice to “finite resources.” Because all humans will experience the finitude of resources, there are good and bad ways of dealing with that fact. The good ways are the virtuous ways.
One of the things we want distributed well is good stuff – like jobs, wealth, resources, social recognition, and the like. Just how these things should be distributed is the subject of much debate. WD Ross suggests that justice demands that things be distributed according to moral worth. That is, good people deserve more. Ross’s own view is complicated, but it’s not a bad starting point.
The Utilitarian view might suggest that the just distribution is the one with the greatest total utility. We’ll need some quick definitions to clarify that statement. Utility, on the Classical Utilitarian View, is pleasure and the absence of pain. So, total utility is equal to pleasure minus pain. That suggests that a society with more total utility is more just than the same society with less. Ideally, we’d include all sentient creatures in the mix, too, so the universe should be structured to produce the greatest amount of utility. How we accomplish that is a bit harder to say, but that’s a good practical question to tackle.
John Rawls criticized the Utilitarian approach for conflating two things: prudence and justice. Prudentially, I should make decisions about when to sacrifice and when to take a risk in my own life. Because I’m the same person risking and winning (or losing), I have no claim against anyone else if my gamble doesn’t pay off. That’s prudence. Utilitarian justice, on the other hand, would ask (or perhaps require) that one person risks and sacrifices for other persons. Utilitarian justice treats all individuals as if they’re just different “slices” of one life. This, Rawls suggests, does not take individual liberties seriously.
Rawls’s own view is complex, but he argued for two main principles. The Principle of Equal Liberty holds that all individuals (who counts? Good question!) have equal liberties and as much as possible of that liberty without toppling a system of rights. So, we perhaps have a right to own firearms, but I probably can’t dance in my front yard while firing a machine gun. Machinegun dancing seriously threatens the system of rights. The Difference Principle suggests that any variance from equality can be justified only if it is to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged. So, allowing some accumulations of wealth in an economic system can be justified if that windfall establishes a safety net for the worst off. That might be a fair application of the Difference Principle.
The libertarian position is most clearly expressed in Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia, though he draws heavily on Locke’s earlier work. Nozick advances a “historical” account of justice. If things are initially acquired in a just way and then retained or transferred in a just way, whatever one holds is just. Force and fraud are not legitimate ways of acquiring property. Mixing our labor might be important, as when someone tills and plants seeds. But the upshot of the libertarian position is that tremendous amounts of inequality could, in theory, be justified. The total utility is irrelevant. Libertarians still see limits on what we can acquire and what we can do with our justly acquired property. The Lockean Proviso states that we must leave “enough and as good” for others. Many acquisitions meet this requirement. If I plant apples in a field, there are now apples for others where there previously were not. This is true even if I sell them to those same people.